Usher Blogs

One [potentially] Giant Leap Forward...

For investor and public relations pros, individual and institutional investors, industry watcher, and others...but it could be a leap back for some of us too.

Jonathan Schwartz is the CEO of Sun Microsystems, who along with his general counsel are certainly bloggers of note.

Jonathan's most recent post entitled "One Small Step for the Blogosphere" reveals a formal letter sent to SEC Commissioner Christopher Cox, which requests a clarification RegFD which currently defines the legal ways in which a public company must make material information available for public access (i.e. ensuring everyone in the public has access to material information at the same time.)

Jonathan's request aims to have corporate blogs recognized as a legal mechanism for  providing "non-exclusionary distribution of the information to the public," something they currently are not.  I have no doubt that this will get a fair hearing and that at some point in the future the SEC will recognize that self-publishing Web sites that are well-established as the voice of a corporation can be considered compliant with RegFD for material information.  I think this is generally a good thing, as a blog can better articulate company vision than a press release, and in a voice that is comparable to a conference call but with better accessibility in many ways. 

It will be interesting to watch how the tool develops at that point and what sort of voice earnings reports end up taking.  It is a looming challenge and terrific opportunity for us corporate communications types.

On Conversations and Molotov Cocktails

I had an interesting exchange - via email - with the nom de plume of Amanda Chapel.  Amanda suggested that my comments on Aedhmar Hynes' blog were to quote Amanda: "a rare synthesis of the current swirl of inane blog blather.  It demonstrates definitively a lack of business and communications sense.  If I were a CEO, and knew you were on the property, I’d call security."

Well, not everyone digs what I have to say.  At any rate, my point - which I sent in a subsequent email was this:

"Blogging, participatory media, whatever you want to call it is another tool for listening.  You may disagree, but I think it is a very powerful and managed correctly, very valuable tool, but it is obviously not the only one.  Any company that listens only to the bloggers does so at their peril.  Still, it holds great potential to do well for companies – when managed appropriately…anarchy is unacceptable, totally agree.  But any company that isn’t listening *at least* for damage control purposes – is being foolish. 

People are talking anyway and whether it is through blogs or something else, once what they say starts moving it can travel really fast.  This means that the bully pulpits of Jarvis (and yes Strumpette) can wreak temporary havoc on your reputation and the case of a stolen phone can capture national attention.  It is also means that you can absorb more rapidly what good customers are saying and convert them into even better ones. 

For example: It is pretty well a given that enterprise software (significant installations that run north of seven figures) will have kinks.  The people buying it don’t necessarily begrudge the vendor that kinks exist they just want to get them worked out quickly.  Collecting and disseminating knowledge related to how and where to apply the iron is of high value to vendors and their customers.  Blogs are a significant tool in this respect.  Some of this customer and vendor knowledge is created and/or resides in the public domain through blogs and elsewhere, some doesn’t.  The point is to collect everything, identify patterns and unique issues, and address both appropriately.  Does this mean a blog post or comments on someone else’s blog?  Maybe, every situation is unique. The point is that how information is disseminated, who gets to consume it, and what it says and to whom still requires a skilled human filter, a role in which good PR people are today adding value. 

We all have our own opinions about who those people are and are not."   

I bring this conversation to light only after reading Jonathan Schwartz' June 2 entry "Sunlight is the Best Informant".  Amanda told me to
"Mark my words, there’s going to be a backlash to all this and the “revolutionaries” will have indelible marks on their heads." 

Jonathan has been CEO for slightly more than 60 days, we've yet to see just what mark his legacy leaves on Sun.  The point in all of this is not that blogs are a holy grail that must be adopted by every company, or that we should head blindly down a path towards "mob rule" as Amanda says.  Rather it is that in the right industries, for the right companies, openness is something customers appreciate and will reward.  Personally, I believe Sun is going to learn an awful lot about their customers and how to build and design better products for them in faster cycles which will return significant shareholder value.

There are Only Two Kinds of People...

that I do business with: those that at least tactically understand presence and use IM regularly, and those that don't.

Those of you I regularly play phone tag with know who you are. Better, faster, more coordinated is the work product produced for your peers when we're regularly sharing presence information.  Qualitative data to be sure, but I'd be willing to bet the cost of quantitative analysis that I'm right.

PR Offensive

We (US) are losing the "war for the hearts and minds" of the Muslim and Arab world for a lot of reasons, but very near the top is terrible PR. 

It always struck me as odd that in Iraq we didn't flood the Arab and Western airwaves with images of Saddam's brutality.  Yes, the American media sucks at reporting and didn't cover it enough, but I don't think our government made a very solid PR push either.  That meant forcing the mass graves in front of the cameras as we did in Europe in 1945. 

Reading Nicolas Kristof's opinion in the NY Times today  on the crisis in Darfur and potential remedies reminded me of this.  Kristof points out that:

A no-fly zone and a U.N. force are among the ways we can apply pressure, but another essential element is public diplomacy. We should respond to Osama by shining a spotlight on the Muslim victims of Darfur (many Arabs have instinctively sided with Sudan's rulers and have no idea that nearly all of the victims of the genocide are Muslim). [emphasis mine.]

The White House can invite survivors for a photo-op so they themselves can recount, in Arabic, how their children were beheaded and their mosques destroyed. We can release atrocity photos, like one I have from an African Union archive of the body of a 2-year-old boy whose face was beaten into mush. President Bush can make a major speech about Darfur, while sending Condi Rice and a planeload of television journalists to a refugee camp in Chad to meet orphans.

We absolutely should do this in Darfur. We must also refresh our PR strategy in the whole Middle East to focus on only three things.  1) The death that muslims are bringing to other muslims in Iraq and elsewhere.  2) Our desire to champion the rights of ordinary people and leave them *soon* to a better future of their own determination.  3) That the other side offers only death.

Right now I'm guessing too many people believe both sides only offer death, and that has to change.

Insulting

Hu Jintao was roundly insulted today.  Dana Milbank is more thorough than I can be.  This was done for a reason and I don't think it was just payback for President Bush's inability to find the door. 

No, there's more and it seems an odd strategy when you need China as a diplomatic partner with the geo-strategic and -economic interests in North Korea and Iran to help us peacefully resolve those Nuclear tensions.   

Treating the Chinese with respect when they are our guests does not remove any options from the table.  It does not tie our hands with North Korea, or Iran, or anyone else, least of all the Chinese.  Slapping them publicly probably removes options, I think this was a mistake. 

Such Arrogance!

Themediaslut points to reason N to the nth power why I hate Apple. Actually, THIS STORY - which you need to check out and watch the video just validates what I've known for a long time - APPLE IS ARROGANT to the point of alienating customers. 

Are you kidding me, how do you screw this one up?  A little girl tosses a softball, a letter as part of a homework assignment, addressed to Steve Jobs on how to improve the iPod.  You've got a probable customer for life who loves her iPod and makes suggestions on how to improve it and she gets back a letter from the office of Apple's General Counsel that the company doesn't accept unsolicited ideas.  Quite.

Well, they should be listening but the fact is that they're clearly too smart to take someone else's suggestions.

Of course, any company that "gets it" - as we hear so often - listens to customer feedback.  Takes the dings along with the praise and figures out how to make customers feel involved in product development, and highlights the successes, including the mitigation of bad customer experiences. 

Again, if I were Sony and I were trying to knock Apple off the throne it used to hold (I had a Walkman way back when) I would open up my product development to customers, and I would implicitly solicit iPod customers to give us your feedback so we can design the iPod killer. 

I'm blown away.  Even if this letter wasn't from a 9 year old - and was say from me - the point is to thank someone for the unsolicited advice and let them know it is certainly something they will consider.  You don't tell a customer to get stuffed when they're offering ideas.

Too Cynical?

Sales of the Da Vinci Code and The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (the latter in particular) have shot through the roof since the authors of 'Grail' launched a copyright infringement suit again publisher of 'Code' (and 'Grail') Random House. 

 

The way it looks to me, there are no losers here.  All of the parties to the suit plus filmmakers of 'Code', Dan Brown, etc. are getting a huge publicity boost and resulting sales and hype for the upcoming movie.  Even the eventual losers are making bank.

 

I'm not saying that it happened this way, just suggesting that hypothetically this whole suit could have been dreamed up and executed by some enterprising lawyers and communications pros for Random House. Moreover, it wouldn't necessarily have had to involve Brown (or wittingly anyway, Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent, two of the three authors of 'Grail' who are party to the suit.)

 

Hmm...if that were true would the people behind what would certainly rank as one of the most successful and at the same time deceitful publicity stunts of all time might well belong in both the PR hall of shame and fame. 

tags: Da Vinci Code Dan Brown The Holy Blood and Holy Grail Random House

Where's the News?

According to The New York Times and its reporter Michael Barbaro:

   

"What is different about Wal-Mart's approach to blogging is that         rather than promoting a product — something it does quite well, given     its $300 billion in annual sales — it is trying to improve its             battered image."

I am not sure how this makes Wal-Mart unique.  Earlier in the story there is a reference to GE meeting with environmental bloggers before investing in green technology "to build support."  Is that promoting a product other than the GE brand?  Is that wrong? 

Having a strong brand helps promote and sell product.  Selling is not necessarily evil, even when it is done in obscene quantities.  Both companies are engaged in grassroots PR and they're not alone and that is a good thing.  Wal-Mart's brand is under attack and they have every right to defend themselves.  Wal-Mart probably does a lot of good, but with a footprint of their size they are bound to trample at least as much. 

The real question (which the Times didn't ask) and its answer are what is actually newsworthy...will Wal-Mart take advantage of the blogosphere as a two way dialogue?  Rather than working only with their friends, will they engage their critics in the blogosphere, open a dialogue, and use blogs as a platform for addressing their concerns.  Wal-Mart is too big and too polarizing today to win over everyone, but by listening to all of their constituents and working on reasonable criticisms, my guess is that they will win more hearts and minds than they lose. (the low prices help too).

Keyword searching is not currently supported...

The Wayback Machine is kind of like a video tape of the vast majority of the Internet's history, capturing probably too much for posterity, but such are the times we live in. 

I don't know what the copyright situation would look like, but why wouldn't Google (or someone else) offer to make it keyword accessible?  It could conceivably be sold as a service to law firms, pr firms, media, and anyone else interested in paying for that kind of capability, or have ads attached to search results or both.  Though being a non-profit Wayback might frown on such behavior, and I imagine that's why it hasn't yet happened.

If that's the case, Google should just donate the capabilities and maybe even the developer resources to make it happen.  It'd be a PR win that supports their mission and adds polish to the "informal corporate motto, 'don't be evil.'"

Google

I'm Gonna Die Screams the Nanomaker

The email I got from Apple (below) on a nearly brand new iPod seems like extortion to me.  They're telling me that the thing is likely going to break and you're going to need phone support and if you don't pay us now we're going to charge you through the teeth later.

I think it is outrageous that consumer technology companies charge for phone support at all, though Apple is surely not alone here.  Phone support should be viewed instead as the data mine it is.  Use its data to improve products and marketing messages and above all make things that will actually work, not ones that will cause a menacing headache as you migrate iTunes libraries from one PC to another in order to consolidate a family of 5's 4 iPod's. 

If I were Sony or anyone else determined to break Apple's stranglehold on portable entertainment I would start advertising free phone support, not just for my own products but for Apple's as well.  Huddle the lawyers and get the disclaimers in a row and then engage each one of Apple's *somewhat* dissatisfied customers (dissatisfied by definition that they are calling in a problem with the device) and figure out what sort of product(s) would get them endure the switching costs.

Now that is (potentially expensive but effective) guerilla warfare. If they sue you, enlist the Naderites and eat them alive in the media as a company not interested in helping its customers.

ipod Apple nano walkman Sony